Episode 9 of the Whisper Me A Love Song yuri anime adaptation won’t be arriving so soon, as the show’s website has announced the airing of two recap specials on June 8 and 15. The episode will now debut on June 22 in Japan instead, with “production circumstances” being cited as the reason for the broadcast date change.
While the specifics of Whisper Me A Love Song‘s production situation are unknown, the delay isn’t a complete surprise given the show’s visibly struggling production as well as earlier signs of trouble — in addition to missing its initial January 2024 premiere window, the anime had a director change due to the original pick’s health and saw Yokohama Animation Lab‘s credits change from animation production supervisor to co-animation production studio (with Cloud Hearts) before the start of broadcast.
Coincidentally, the announcement of Episode 9’s delay happened to arrive shortly after a fairly viral — and error-containing — X (formerly Twitter) thread that attempted to paint a picture of Whisper Me A Love Song‘s troubled production. Although this development, as well as the obvious issues with the anime, may appear to substantiate the entirety of that thread, it’s worth noting that there are statements in it that do not stand up to scrutiny. For instance, the credits for Episode 7 show that the concert scene had nine key animators — plus a few second key animators and an unknown number of in-betweeners — instead of the claimed “2-4 people.” It also wrote that Yokohama Animation Lab’s “entire team left the project,” despite Episode 5’s in-house production status and the studio’s (varying) involvement in other episodes.
The thread also provided a distorted and incomplete image of outsourcing — a topic which the reputable Sakuga Blog delved into in a 2021 article — and animation production in general by calling the production’s use of it “scummy business” and claiming that every episode has a different “production level” due to the series having multiple outsourcing studios. While the presence of multiple full-outsourced episodes in a one-cour series is a strong indicator of manpower and/or time issues, the practice of outsourcing is not inherently bad (and is certainly not new or niche) and does not inherently create drastic changes in quality. Neither is it a requisite for production quality differences or drops within the same show.
Whisper Me A Love Song premiered on April 13 (effectively April 14 at 1:30 AM JST) and is available on HIDIVE. The anime is an adaptation of the manga by Eku Takeshima, which began serialization in Ichijinsha’s Comic Yuri Hime in 2019 and has nine tankoubon volumes as of March 2024.
Kodansha USA describes the manga’s premise as:
Bubbly, energetic first-year high school student Himari falls head over heels for her senpai Yori after hearing her band perform on the first day of school. Himari tells Yori she just loves her, and, to Himari’s surprise, Yori says she loves Himari back! But when Himari realizes that she and her senpai are feeling two different kinds of love, she begins to ask herself what “love” really means…
Staff
• Director: Akira Mano (Ghost Hunt, Gunslinger Girl: -Il Teatrino-), replacing Xinya Cai (The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt assistant director)
• Series composer: Hiroki Uchida (Requiem of the Rose King)
• Character designer: Minami Yoshida (Manaria Friends)
• Sub-character designer and costume designer Ryunosuke Oji (Legend of Mana: The Teardrop Crystal sub-character designer)
• Music composers: Hiroshi Sasaki and Wataru Maeguchi
Cast
• Hana Shimano as Himari Kino
• Asami Seto as Yori Asanagi
• Mikako Komatsu as Aki Mizuguchi
• Konomi Kohara as Mari Tsutsui
• Ai Kakuma as Kaori Tachibana
• Yuna Nemoto as Shiho Izumi
• Kana Sasakura as Yori (singing voice)
• Sui Mizukami as Shiho (singing voice)
Source: @sasakoi_anime
